Antagonize
by Morgana Maeve
Summary: -Axel.Xaldin.Babble- They are both betrayers, but of different sorts.


Antagonize

Morgana Maeve

8/3/08 – Axel/Xaldin. This isn't even a crack pairing. Kill me now.

Warnings: No warnings. I can't write porn of this. I'd die.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. They belong to Disney and Square.

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The alleyway is dark, and in any other world, at any other time, Axel would have had his keys in his fist, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. But this is not even a true world, and so, it doesn't really matter. There's no one else around.

He likes to come here to be alone, away from the eight other members whose silence and forced cheerfulness he can't stand. The newest one, Demyx, is the most annoying, hanging out in strange places, that monstrosity of an instrument always by his side. But still, they are all that he has. There's no point in antagonizing them too much.

The neon lights of this false city are cold and pale, color washed out from the perpetual rain, weak imitations of pink and yellow and blue reflected in grimy puddles on the street.

'That is what we are,' thinks Axel sourly. 'Imperfect reflections on rippling water.'

Sour is about the only thing he can feel half the time, but the older members all tell him that it will pass. It is something that all Nobodies go through, they say, and eventually, he will forget what even the deepest depression feels like. For that is what the sour is: a fragmented memory of morbid desolation.

Memory's Skyscraper stands tall, looming over the city like a terrible guardian, a solemn and immoveable presence that's been there since the beginning of time. Sometimes, on good nights, the jumbled screens plastered to its top show fuzzy images of lives that had once been and lives that are now.

Sometimes it's the Keyblade master, running around between worlds, forging ties between lands that would never have known each other's existence if it hadn't been for him. Or sometimes, it's the Keyblade master's friend, that silly little boy, dragging around the empty body of a girl, trying to so hard to win the affection of an unrequited wish, that his heart has corrupted him, heartstrings strangling his mind. It's a sad thing to watch, the boy, always one world too late, a puppet of the Witch, but it is captivating in that same sense.

Tonight, however, Axel is in for a shock. He starts in surprise when he realizes it is _he_ there on the screen, and for a second, all the dust within his shell kicks up in one raging storm, and his phantom heart pounds in his chest, air whistling in his lungs. But then the cool ambivalence of a stranger takes over, and he watches the screen with a critical eye.

He hasn't seen himself in months, and he has already forgotten what he used to look like. He wonders if he looks drastically different, hair and eyes and other little things slightly altered. But there is no way to check. There are no mirrors in Xemnas' creation, and when he looks down into a puddle, all he sees is a mess of red and black.

The picture is grainy and yellow, and the rain stings his cheeks as he looks up, water beading down his face. He doesn't know how the screens find these pictures, and he doesn't care. He just wants to watch and forget everything else for a while.

And so, his life flits by in a mess of nonsensical snippets, all out of order and with no rhythm, pounding rain on concrete roofs the only sound. On the screen, he is running, falling, slipping in powdered snow, blood spotting the sparkling mangled white. One hand clutches his chest, pressing the wound shut and sending shrill notes of pain throughout his body, but the Axel on the ground can't feel a thing. Something black and amorphous slithers behind him on the snow, and pounces on his leg, more red on white, hot heat melting the icy cold. The black shadow climbs over his aching body.

The picture cuts short, sharp static lines slicing the image to pieces. Axel's hands are clenched tight, dust trickling from his fingers, and he has bitten through his lip, teeth sunk deep in flesh.

"They only show you what you want to know," says Xaldin, who has slipped up behind him. "Watch them long enough, and you're liable to lose yourself."

"I've already lost myself," Axel snaps bitterly. "What do you want?"

"The Superior sent me," Xaldin replies with his trademark serpent grin. "He wants to see you."

"Is it an assignment?"

"I wouldn't know. The Superior doesn't tell me everything."

"I wonder why that is." Axel doesn't mean to be spiteful and mean, but there is such relief in being nasty that he can't stop the poison from leaving his mouth. "Maybe he doesn't trust you."

"You're the one he shouldn't trust," Xaldin answers back easily. "I wouldn't trust you. In fact, I don't trust you."

"I've never done anything to garner such animosity." It is a dig at Xemnas' formal speech, and Xaldin knows it.

"But you have. Just not in this life." Xaldin jerks a gloved thumb to the screen. "You were nothing more than a back-stabber."

Ghost anger explodes within him, and Axel whirls around, rain hissing as it hits his skin. "_I_ was nothing more than a back-stabber," he repeats. "Take a good look at yourself before you start slinging labels around. What where you once? A scientist? An apprentice? You betrayed your master." The words are coming faster as the fury becomes more real, and with reckless abandon Axel plunges on, tone dropping to a snarling whisper. "You betrayed your master and followed the devil into his very own lair. And here you stand to lecture me? You are no better than I am."

The wind crashes into him with unbridled force, catching him unawares and lifting him, hurling his body into the sharp shininess of the tower, a wet crunch at his back. Colors burst behind his eyes, and all he can think is, 'Oh God, something is broken. I'm broken from the inside.'

Xaldin watches just long enough to see Axel's body meld in contour to the building, and then he turns, stalking away. But Axel wants the last word.

"They call people like you traitors."

The lance misses him by millimeters, striking through hair, landing just where the curve of Axel's neck meets his ear, and he stays there, pinned not by the lance thrown with expert ease, but by the slow mending of shadowy bones, body trying to knit itself back together.

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Argh, I can't take this anymore.

Read and review if you want. I didn't even want to write this, so yeah, I'm on autopilot.


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